Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1887-01-24
ENGLISH INDUSTRIES.

How fected by Free Trade as opposed
to n Protective Tarif-The subject
ms Discussed Before the Equal Rights
Club.
The meeting of the equal Rights club"
yesterday afternoon at their rooms at S17
Chapel street was one of the most interesting
ever held by that association. There was
good attendance. The opening address, en-
titled 1.-THE Rise of the English Industries, or
Prosperity of Nation not due to Protective
Tariff" was made by James F. Cowles,
treasurer of the Tariff Reform league of
Connecticut
His address was received very well by
those present, and it was followed by stir
ring speeches upon the necessity of the re-
duction of tariff taxation, and in support of
Mr.. Cowles, by Senator James Gallagher, J.
B. Sargent and Porter G. Moulton. The
only speaker in favor of protection was Mr..
| Shepard.
Mr.. Cowles' text was: "Every town and
| country in proportion as it has opened its
ports to all nations, instead of being ruined
| by that trade has been enriched by it." He
| said that the prosperity of England previous
to the free trade era was in no degree due to
| the high tariff regime that had prevailed not
| only in England but in all other countries.
In England, freedom of trade, as ever 9th
er kind of freedom, had for centuries been
greater than in any other country. In COM
parison with Eenglishmen the inhabitants of
| Europe had. since the era OF Charles
", been slaves. The iron and
| wool industries of England owed
| their birth to the efforts OF the wise king,
Edward III, and his wife Phillipa, in the
| fourteenth century. In the seventeenth CEN
| tury the iron business of England went
almost out of existence, owing to the lack of
the rare material, charcoal. About the year
100 England imported her iron from Sweden
and Norway, and later from America. The
iron business of England revived about 1850,
when it was discovered that coal converted
into coke could be used for the manufacture
of iron.
Then came the inventions of Watt and
Smeaton, Arkwright and Hargreaves and
that host of other inventors who, following
in their footsteps, have given to England her
leadership in the worlds industries. The
working classes of England, however, had
small show in the prosperity of the nation
until after the inauguration of the free trade
era.
The workingmen of England indeed seldom
endured greater hardships than during the
fifty years of high protection, previous to the
abolition of the corn law.
In 1915, the English workman paid fifty
dollars year in taxes to government and
protected monopoly. Even in 1916 Golden
said that the workman paid to the govern
ment from to 16 shillings of every pound
which they expended on certain great staple
articles of their consumption. To-day his
taxes are next to nothing.
Mr.. Cowles cited one great industry, the
manufacture of chemicals, which owed its
birth to the removal of the tax on salt.
Quoting Leone Levi, in his History Of British
Commerce, he said that it was not until com
mon salt was relieved of taxation that Mr..
Muspratt erected his works at Liverpool and
laid the foundation of a manufacture of
chemical products which has since become
the largest in the world. The export of
English chemicals in 1878 was $10,000,000.
Except for the duty of from forty to eighty
per cent on salt and seventy-6ve cents a ton
on coal we might have equally successful
chemical factories in New England. The
tariff was the main cause of the labor
troubles, which have been rife in this coun-
try of late years. The workingmen of
America are slaves to the owners of our
mines and our forests, who have had laws
passed at Washington to protect them in
taxing their fellow citizens.